The summer the kids took off

*Photo by yours truly

Good morning underachievers,

It’s Sunday, the day for doing nothing. That’s a hard and fast rule, always has been. A relic of religion, Sundays in the city are now reserved for yoga classes, lengthy brunches, dates with the DVD player, and feature-length reporting, read at leisure.

My Sunday is spent browsing what’s possibly the most pretentious thing to pull out on an afternoon alone at a coffee shop: the New York Times. The macbook is a close second. I have both, and the cult of singular coffee-drinkers would be shooting me knowing, hateful glares, were there eyes not hidden behind sunglasses, or directed at a book of sodukos.

Mid day meetings with relaxation fill the patio tables. The sun is beating doing on lethargic movements; cars are driving in no particular direction. The boomers are about, tightly laced cross-trainers walking them on what is deemed to be a well-deserved break. But as Alex Williams explains, their kids are actually the ones with nothing to do.

Generation Y: get ready for every day to feel like Sunday.

Say Hello to Underachieving , the Sunday Styles headline reads. Another weekend trend piece, this time about the summer the kids are taking off.

“School’s out for summer 2009, and instead of getting a jump on the boundless futures that parents and colleges always promised them, students this year are receiving a reality check. The well-paying summer jobs that in previous years seemed like a birthright have grown scarce, and pre-professional internships are disappearing as companies cut back across the board,” the article reads.

According to Williams, as internships and corporate summer positions dry up, out of session millennial students are returning to the minimum wage positions that carried them through high school and academic evenings off—if they can find employment at all. The rest are returning to crowded nests: the parental homesteads that have since been conceptualized only as comfort food bread-and-breakfasts for holiday visits.

Has my generation receded, agreeing to do little, or at least less, all summer? As my partner in crime leaves me at the coffee shop to attend to an unpaid apprenticeship outside his undergraduate industry, I’m tempted to agree. Others I know are also doing less than in summers past, and a few are indeed unabashedly doing nothing.

As the semester ended and summer plans were announced, an accepted frugality was in the air. One classmate cringed between drags of a cigarette, announcing she’d be working in a cafeteria she hoped wouldn’t force a net over her well-conditioned hair. Just twelve months earlier, she was packing her bags for Manhattan, where she spent last summer interning at a prominent fashion magazine.

This summer may not be glamorous, but for some the spare time is relieving. Another friend, a Toronto-based fashion student, recently told me she’s comfortably unemployed, living in her brother’s apartment for the summer, back home in British Columbia. While the winter had been filled with sleepless nights in the studio, summer has given way to days at the beach and evenings killing time with old friends.

For many millennials, there’s never been this much time to kill. Our parents pushed us into after-school programs, dance classes, music lessons, and soccer leagues. Time was cut into half and hour long segments, all to prepare us for a world where we could pursue our interests, in addition to our eventual integration into a workforce we’d be more than prepared for.

But as it happened, the workforce isn’t prepared for us. Especially this summer, there isn’t any office space to fill. Even entry-level positions are occupied by over qualified workers who were forced to jump to smaller ships when the economy went sour. And for a generation that, as author Ron Aslop says, “Were always given trophies just for showing up,” so much spare time can be disheartening and un-fulfilling.

Fret not though, fellow youngsters. The experienced, educated, liberal elites at the Times think it’s just what we need. Resident expert, psychologist Peter A. Spevak, tells Williams:

“Parents have really put a lot of pressure on the kids—everything has been organized, they’re all taking A.P. courses, then summer hits and they’re going to learning camps,” This summer, Spevak says it’s time to kick back, drink cheap beer with other newbie underachievers and reflect on the over-excess of information that has always been thrust upon us. “There is something to be said about sitting out on a warm evening and looking at the stars—they need more of this contemplation and self-evaluation,” he says.

There it is: a golden permission slip to skip out on the coming months. Enjoy the summer the elderly filled the only jobs that were left after everyone downgraded. Have a beer on boomer buck. Drain the bank accounts that were once would-be trust funds, and are now the only dollars and cents left. Sleep till noon, fill your livers with liquor, and wait for the health care to run out.

Underachievers, I salute you. Now get off the internet and enjoy an afternoon of empty, recessionary sun rays.